Friday, November 16, 2018

When it was announced that a
movie featuring a young Han Solo was in the works, the Star Wars fanbase took to the Internet to complain, their
collective outrage came on two fronts: the casing to Alden Ehrenreich as Han,
the role originated and made iconic by Harrison Ford, and the very existence of
this movie would ruin the mystique of the character. Much like the other
non-saga Star Wars movie, Rogue One (2016), Solo (2018) had a well-documented troubled production with the
original directors replaced midway through principal photography by Ron Howard.

While the movie garnered
strong reviews, it underperformed at the box office – the lowest of any of the Star Wars movies, which led pundits to
speculate that its poor performance was due to it being released too close to Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) and
people were sick of Star Wars movies
(and yet Marvel doesn’t seem to have this problem). Was it merely a matter of
timing, its thunder stolen by superhero movie juggernauts Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Deadpool 2 (2018) or were audiences simply not interested in a Han
Solo movie that didn’t have Ford reprising the role? Ultimately, all of this is
meaningless in the face of a much bigger question: is Solo any good?

We meet a young Han
(Ehrenreich) struggling to survive on the dangerous streets of Corellia with
his girlfriend Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). They live by their wits, scamming and
scheming a way off this dead-end planet. All Han dreams about is being the best
pilot in the galaxy but he has very few options except for the Empire. He
enlists in the Imperial Navy and finds that he doesn’t take orders too well and
this lands him trouble. It also puts him in contact with two people who will be
the important figures in his development as an outlaw – Chewbacca the Wookie
(Joonas Suotamo), a prisoner of the Empire, and Tobias Beckett (Woody
Harrelson), a veteran criminal who becomes a mentor to Han, schooling him on
how to be an outlaw. They introduce the young man to an exciting and dangerous
world populated by colorful characters, none of whom he can trust.

Director Ron Howard wastes
no time jumping right into it as Han and Qi’ra try to escape local gangsters
via an exciting hover vehicle chase that shows off not just his piloting skills
but also his willingness to take chances and press his luck. That being said, Solo starts off a little awkwardly with
Han and Qi’ra’s downtrodden street urchin beginnings coming off as Charles
Dickens by way of Blade Runner
(1982). It isn’t all that interesting but from a story point-of-view I
understand its purpose. It establishes the unbreakable bond between them. They
grew up on the streets together and learned how to survive by sheering cunning
and wits. It also establishes Han’s legendary lousy negotiating skills. Perhaps
the movie should’ve started in medias res with Han and Qi’ra on the run from
Lady Proxima’s goons. It would’ve been a bolder move to just drop us right in
it and establish Han’s formidable piloting skills. In addition, getting
separated at the Imperial checkpoints is an excellent way of showing how close
they are and how painful it is for them to be torn apart (Han giving Qi’ra his
lucky dice is a nice touch) by the Empire. Although, the moment where we learn
how Han got his surname is clumsy and unnecessary as it awkwardly references The Godfather Part II (1974). I do like
how this scene ends – with Han alone and afraid, which is a scenario we rarely
see him in.

Solo
really gets going when we catch up with Han three years later fighting for the
Empire and meets Chewie and Beckett. It is also a brief albeit fascinating look
at the Empire from the P.O.V. of the foot soldier: they are cannon fodder in a
dirty chaotic battlefield that Han is lucky to survive. As bonus to film buffs,
there’s even a nice visual nod to Stanley Kubrick’s World War I film Paths of Glory (1957). Once free of the
Empire and in the employ of Beckett, Han enters a bigger world and the movie
opens up as well.

It doesn’t take long for
Ehrenreich to slip effortlessly into the role and make it his own. He doesn’t
really look like Ford and doesn’t try to imitate the actor either, but instead
adopts a few choice mannerisms of the character. He captures Han’s swagger and
smartass disregard for authority brilliantly and in a way that shows the
beginnings of the man we see in Star
Wars: A New Hope (1977). In Solo,
Han still trusts people and has a sense of wonder, which Ehrenreich conveys
quite well when he witnesses his first jump to hyperspace aboard the Millennium
Falcon as he finally realizes his dream to see the galaxy. The actor is playing
Han at an age that we never saw Ford play the character. It isn’t like
Ehrenreich is replacing Ford but instead playing Han at a young age much like
River Phoenix played a young Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

When Han, Chewie and Beckett
arrive on infamous crime boss Dryden Vos’ (Paul Bettany) “yacht,” Ehrenreich does
some of his best work with low-key comedy as Han tries to follow Beckett’s
advice only to quickly abandon it. He’s told to keep his eyes down and not look
at anyone. For a few seconds he does and the actor’s slightly embarrassed look
is amusing. This quickly gives way to a romantic vibe when he’s reunited with
Qi’ra and Ehrenreich does an excellent job of showing the rush of emotions that
play over Han’s face. This entire sequence shows Han clearly out of his depth
and trying to convey a confident front. The humor comes from the brief moments
where we get glimpses of cracks in this façade.

Han even comes up with an
unconventional solution to the coaxium they need to get for Dryden or risk
facing his wrath. The young man is bullshitting his way through the plan as
fast as he can. Fortunately, Beckett and Qi’ra catch on the help flesh it out.
The best moment comes when Han proposes that he’ll fly the coaxium to a
refinery before it destabilizes: “We’ve already got the pilot.” Ehrenreich
points to himself and flashes Han’s trademark cocky smirk. This is the moment
that Han starts to become the character we all know and love. The rest of the
movie sees the actor build the character of Han bit by bit, like when he first
boards the Falcon and begins to adopt Han’s trademark stance, even the way Ford
would lean against a doorway. These are little gestures but they all go towards
building the character up.

Another inspired bit of
casting is Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, a smooth operator that knows how
to invent his own luck, especially when it comes to games of chance. We meet him
plying his trade: fleecing people of their money in a card game known as
Sabacc. Glover exudes a cool sense of style and a confidence that is fun to watch,
as is the amusing interplay with Han, most notably when they verbally spar
while playing cards. Here are two arrogant smugglers facing off against each
other for increasingly higher stakes. Glover is funny as Lando treats Han with
whimsical condescension, much to Han’s chagrin, but his cockiness is put in
check when Beckett steps in to negotiate his percentage of the take from an
upcoming score.

Lawrence and Jonathan
Kasdan’s screenplay invokes A New Hope
and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) by
paying homage to its roots – the old serials from a bygone era. Solo is structured as a series of
cliffhangers as our heroes go from one sticky situation to another. The elder
Kasdan slips right back into Han and Lando’s familiar cadences with ease,
crafting a space western complete with chases, shoot-outs and showdowns.

The script also includes
several character building moments between action sequences, like when Han and
Chewie tell Beckett and his crew what they are going to do with their share
from the loot in an upcoming score. It gives us insight into what motivates
them. They’re not just mercenaries like Beckett and his crew. Han and Chewie
have personal goals – the former wants to buy his own ship and go back for
Qi’ra while the latter wants to free his people that have been enslaved by the
Empire.

This is not to say that Solo doesn’t have its action-packed set
pieces. The movie’s centerpiece is a thrilling train heist as Han, Chewie,
Beckett and his crew attempt to steal a shipment of coaxium, a valuable
commodity, from the Empire while also trying to fend off a gang of pirates led
by the mysterious Enfys Nest (Erin Kellyman). There are plenty of tense moments
as our heroes have to deal with multiple opponents whilst atop a very volatile
and valuable shipment. This is the first time Han plays a pivotal role in
something and he almost succeeds. He’s faced with a dilemma that forces him to
take a risk or play it safe and he opts for the latter. It is an important
lesson and from that point on he fully commits to being a risk-taking smuggler
like Beckett who tells him, “You’re in this life for good.”

“You want to know how I’ve
survived as long as I have? I trust no one. Assume every one will betray you
and you will never be disappointed,” says Beckett to Han halfway through Solo. The young man replies, “Sounds
like a lonely way to live.” The veteran outlaw simply tells him, “It’s the only
way.” This exchange lays the down the foundation for the Han we first meet in A New Hope – a cynical smuggler that is
out for only one person – himself. There’s an argument to be made that this
movie is completely unnecessary and demystifies the iconic character. I
understand this sentiment as I was initially resistant to this movie and the
whole idea of it. Solo only sheds
some light on the character of Han. There is still plenty of mystery to the
character, like how does he go from this movie to which we see in A New Hope? What exactly went down
between him and Jabba? Did he ever cross paths with Qi’ra again? What is
Lando’s backstory? Or Chewie’s? We are only given small pieces of their story.
There are so many adventures he and Chewie had between this movie and A New Hope that leaves plenty of gaps
for us to use or imagination, especially since the disappointing box office
results all but assures there won’t be a sequel anytime soon. Solo creates such a rich, textured world
and introduces so many fascinating character that there are even more questions
left unanswered about Han and his future.

I find myself enjoying these
anthology movies more than the actual chapter movies. It might be that Rogue One and Solo don’t have to be too slavish to the style, tone and structure
of the saga movies and this gives them the freedom to be their own thing. They
also both explore the nooks and crannies of the Star Wars universe, showing us worlds we’ve never seen before and
introducing us to all kinds of new characters we’ve never met. I have fond
memories of reading the trilogy of Han
Solo Adventures novels that came out in the late 1970s and they made me
daydream about all kinds of adventures that Han and Chewie had pre-A New Hope. It was great to finally see
a movie that realized those dreams and brought them so vividly to life.

Monday, October 22, 2018

El Topo
(1970), Pink Flamingos (1972), Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and Repo Man (1984). These iconic films are
examples of “midnight movies” – cinema so outlandish and bizarre that they
could only be viewed at midnight screenings, typically financial flops during
their initial theatrical run only to be rediscovered later by a small but
dedicated following that worships every scene, every bit of memorable dialogue.
These films dealt with wild elements like drugs, rock 'n' roll, sex and
violence in extreme ways so that the act of going to see them felt like a taboo
smashing event in itself. The midnight movies aesthetic nearly became extinct
thanks to the decline of art houses and repertory theatres and the popularity
of home video and the Internet. Like the zombies in Romero’s Dead films, however, the midnight movie
experience refused to die with films like Donnie
Darko (2001) developing a cult following through late night screenings.
Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy (2018)
continues this tradition.

The film rather fittingly
received its theatrical debut at midnight. It is a throwback to the midnight
movie aesthetic – imagine a Frank Frazetta illustration brought to life by some
kind of cinematic alchemy courtesy of Alejandro Jodorowsky if he decided to
direct a biker movie. This is the cinematic equivalent of a death metal record
and feels like it should be watched with a black light on. Mandy returns us to the heady times when a film was experienced as
opposed to merely being watched. It comes from the mind of Panos Cosmatos, son
of journeyman Hollywood director George P. Cosmatos (responsible for action
fare like Rambo: First Blood Part II and
Cobra). Mandy is the follow-up to his auspicious debut Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010), a hallucinatory mood piece that
felt like early David Cronenberg on acid.

Cosmatos sets the tone right
from the get-go with “Starless” by King Crimson playing over the opening
credits while introducing Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) plying his trade as a
logger. He returns home after a hard day’s work to his girlfriend Mandy Bloom
(Andrea Riseborough), an artist who creates wonderfully detailed fantasy art.
Cosmatos makes a simple scene like the couple talking in bed visually arresting
by employing a series of constantly shifting color filters over them. The first
half of the film is a love story between Red and Mandy as we hang out with
them, observing the couple talking in bed and eating dinner in front of their
television – things that most couples do. This gets us to care about and like
them. It also shows how Red is defined by his relationship with Mandy. He works
hard during the day cutting trees. He doesn’t enjoy it; he does it to support
them. He is also supportive of her work as an illustrator, taking a genuine
interest in her latest project.

Cosmatos’ film is permeated
with a dreamy atmosphere where everyone talks slowly with pregnant pauses and
utilizes long takes like something out of a David Lynch film. An ominous tone
is gradually established throughout the first half of the film as there is the
feeling that something horrible is going to happen. While out for a walk one
day a truck emerges out of a hellish light and passes by her. One of the
passengers is Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache), leader of a hippie cult known as
Children of the New Dawn. He notices and becomes immediately fixated on her. He
enlists his people to kidnap Mandy and they in turn call upon the Black Skulls,
a demonic biker gang from out of the woods in an unsettling scene where they
are summoned with a mystical horn, emerging in the form the marauders from The Road Warrior (1981) if they mated
with the Cenobites from Hellraiser
(1987).

They kidnap Mandy in the
middle of the night and subdue Red amidst strobing lights in a nightmarish
scene. Once the cultists dose Mandy with LSD and the venom from a giant black
wasp that apparently lives in mysterious thick fluid, Cosmatos cuts loose with
the Giallo lighting and a trippy audio/visual assault on the senses. Sand and
his people torture Red and force him to watch a gut-wrenching act that destroys
his entire world. Of course, the cultists make the fatal flaw that bad guys
always make in revenge movies – they let the hero live when they had the chance
to kill him. Once free, Red makes it his sole mission in life to wreak unholy
vengeance on Sand and his cult of Jesus freaks. From this point on Mandy becomes a full-throttle revenge
picture referencing Enter the Dragon
(1973) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
(1986) as Red drops acid, snorts cocaine and lights a cigarette from the
flaming skull of a biker on his bloody path of revenge.

Cosmatos understands that
for a revenge story to work the antagonist must do evil things that affect the
protagonist in a very personal way so that the vengeance that comes later on is
not only satisfying for the hero but a cathartic experience for the audience.
Over the course of the film, Red undergoes a harrowing transformation from
loving everyman to home-made, axe-wielding golem whose breaking point comes
during an impressively acted freak out by Nicolas Cage that rivals Martin Sheen
hitting rock bottom at the beginning of Apocalypse
Now (1979). There is something genuine about the primal anger and sadness
that Cage emotes in this powerful scene.

These days when you watch a
Nicolas Cage movie you know what you’re going to get. Long gone are the days
where he’d attack every film role that came his way with unpredictable gusto.
Since his last significant studio movie and his well-publicized financial
problems he’s appeared in several forgettable movies. Every so often, however,
he throws audiences a curveball, appearing in notable projects like Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
(2009) and Drive Angry (2011) that
allow him to channel his inner Cage and demonstrate that the desire to cut
loose has not gone away; it merely lies dormant, anticipating the opportunity
to let its freak flag fly. Mandy is
such a film.

The character of Mandy is
tied to the earth as evident in a scene where she grieves for a dead baby
animal she encounters while out for a walk in the woods. While Red suggests
leaving at some point, she disagrees, finding it peaceful out in the middle of
nowhere. She also recounts a story about her father killing a baby starling
with a crowbar and how he gave it to other kids so they could take a turn but
when it came to her time she ran away. Andrea Riseborough does an excellent job
in these scenes, giving insight into Mandy’s dark past and how she feels safe
and happy with Red.

Linus Roache plays Jeremiah as
a charismatic figure that destroys one man’s life for his own trivial
fantasies. He is a cult leader with a messiah complex, spouting pseudo philosophical
religious twaddle while the women in his cult serve and service him. He
surrounds himself with people willing to do his bidding and is ultimately
portrayed as a pathetic figure with delusions of grandeur that will be his
undoing.

Hopefully, the buzz that Mandy has generated will get Cage out of
cinema purgatory and back working with top tier talent on significant material
instead of garbage like 211 (2018)
and The Humanity Bureau (2018). He
has always been something of a wild card, following his own internal muse for
better or for worse. Mandy shows that
he can still deliver the goods if given the right material. Hopefully, it will
also allow Cosmatos to make another film in less time it took between this and Beyond the Black Rainbow. He wisely
bided his time between projects until he hooked up with backers that were
willing to give him the creative freedom he wanted. It has more than paid off –
the end result is a confident and assured film with a bold, distinctive visual
style and many unforgettable moments that make it a prime candidate for the
midnight movie hall of fame.

Friday, September 21, 2018

“When people say if you don’t love America, then get
the hell out. Well, I love America, but when it comes to the government, it
stops right there.” – Ron Kovic

Oliver Stone’s filmic prescience
is widely regarded by critics, students and the public at large. It hit is apex
with 1989’s Born on the Fourth of July,
a cinematic crystal ball, which anticipated the rise of Donald Trump’s divisive
“Make America Great Again” nationalism. Stone’s biopic traces the life of Ron
Kovic (Tom Cruise), from his beginnings as the quintessential all-American boy
proud eager to serve the country he loves and respects in the Vietnam War, to
being a disillusioned veteran, paralyzed in battle and how it led to his
anti-war activism. This film asks particularly difficult questions about what
it means to be American and has become even more relevant today than the year
it was released to critical and commercial success.

Ron Kovic’s voiceover
narration establishes a picturesque childhood, he and his best friends play
soldiers with other neighborhood kids. He grows up in the Norman Rockwell-esque
small town America of the 1950s. Born on
the Fourth of July is propaganda – but all is not what it appears; Stone
cleverly subverts it, showing us little cracks in the idyllic façade. As a
child, Ron idolizes the soldiers he sees with his family in a parade early on
in the film. This is tempered when one soldier visibly winces at the sound of firecrackers
and another is shown, arms lost in battle, a grim look on his face.

Stone’s multi-layered
patriotic imagery during the opening credits sequence is bathed in a sun-kissed
glow, courtesy of Robert Richardson’s stunning cinematography. Ron’s mother
(Caroline Kava) even calls him her “little Yankee Doodle Boy.” This is the land
of 4th of July fireworks, parades populated by beautiful
cheerleaders and where Ron is an exceptional athlete, hitting an in-the-park
home run as a boy. He lives in suburbia with a family that embodies the
American Dream.

As a teenager, he excels in
wrestling, being pushed to his limits by a coach whom has all the zeal of an
army drill sergeant. It is in these early scenes that we see the Tom Cruise we
all know – the ambitious go-getter, but Stone tempers this by showing Ron lose
an important match in front of his classmates, friends, and family. His
anguished expression – as boos ring out around him –foreshadows more painful
defeats to come.

Ron’s hero worship of the military
continues when he attends a presentation (a.k.a. a recruitment pitch) by the
United States Marines at his school. There is delicious irony as Ron looks
adoringly at the Marine speaking (played by none other than Tom Berenger) as if
the actor’s demonic soldier from Platoon (1986)
somehow survived, returning stateside to recruit young men to fight in the
Vietnam War.

Ron buys into it, eager to
serve his country as his father (Raymond J. Barry) did before him in World War
II. He wants to go and fight in
Vietnam and is even willing to die there (“I want to go to Vietnam – and I’ll
die there if I have to). His life is playing out like a stereotypical Hollywood
movie. He even rushes to the prom, in the rain, to declare his love for
girl-next-door-eseque Donna (Kyra Sedgwick) as “Moon River” plays over the gymnasium
speakers.

Ron’s idyllic youth comes to
a violent end once we see him in ‘Nam, his platoon accidentally slaughtering an
entire village. To make matters worse, he inadvertently shoots and kills one of
his own soldiers. He tries to own up to it but his superior (John Getz)
dismisses him. Where everything stateside was simple to understand – Ron always
took for granted that he knew what was expected of him. Vietnam is chaotic and
confusing, the enemy difficult to identify. As he did with Platoon, Stone immerses us in the sights and sounds of battle,
albeit in a more stylized depiction. Here, he employs more slow-motion, filters,
and skewed camera angles to show the disorienting effect of combat through
Ron’s eyes.

He is wounded in battle and is
shipped back to the Bronx Veterans Hospital where he finds out that he’s been
paralyzed from the chest down. Despite the absolutely appalling conditions
(rats scurrying between beds, interns shooting up in closets and Ron starring
at his own vomit for hours), he still believes in the American Dream and is
critical of the anti-war protestors he sees on television. He aggressively
attacks physical therapy, refusing to accept the doctor’s diagnosis that he’ll
never regain the use of his legs.

Cruise is particularly
effective in these scenes as he conveys Ron’s gradual disillusionment with the
system. He is slowly becoming dehumanized by the system that cares little about
him. Government cutbacks result in poor conditions and treatment that Stone
depicts in unflinching detail. Is this how our country honors those that put
everything on the line to serve their country?

Ron’s homecoming is a
heart-wrenchingly bittersweet one. On the surface, his family is happy to see
him – the heartbreaking emotions swell under the surface, conveyed in his
mother’s eyes when she embraces him, giving a brief, sad look that he is unable
to see. While his father goes on about the changes he’s made to the bathroom to
make it more accessible for his son, Ron only half-listens as he looks around
his old bedroom, lingering on a photograph of himself during his wrestling days
at high school. Stone shows Ron’s image reflected in the glass of the picture
frame, visually giving us a before and after of this man’s life.

Ron quickly picks up on how differently
people in the town look at him: “Sometimes I think people know you’re back from
Vietnam and their face changes, their eyes, the voice, the way they look at
you.” A family dinner breaks up when Ron’s brother (Josh Evans) leaves the
table, unable to stomach his brother’s patriotic rant. He participates in a
parade, much like the one he saw as a child and flinches at the sound of a
firecracker, like the veterans he once saw, and this time is faced with angry
protestors and other townsfolk; he begins to realize this is not his father’s
war.

At the rally afterwards, Ron
falters while making a patriotic speech as he experiences a flashback to ‘Nam.
Confused, he is “rescued” by childhood friend and fellow veteran Timmy Burns
(Frank Whaley). The relief that washes over him at the sight of a familiar face
is palpable. The scene between the two men afterwards is quietly affecting as
they share stories of their experiences on the battlefield. Timmy tells Ron
about the headaches he has – “I don’t feel like me anymore” – and his
frustration that the doctors don’t know how to help him. Cruise conveys
incredible vulnerability as Ron regrets the mistakes he made in Vietnam, how he
feels like a failure, and how badly he wants to regain the ability to walk.
This scene features some particularly strong acting from both men, defining
moments for both actors and the characters.

I like how Stone spends time
showing the moments and events that happen to change Ron’s views of the war. It
wasn’t just one incident but a series of them, most significantly an anti-war
rally where we can see the change of his way of thinking play over his face. Without
warning, cops move in and he watches, helplessly, as they beat protestors. At
last, Ron breaks down in his parents’ home, getting into a shouting match with
his mother as he finally lets out all of the anger and anguish built up inside
him about the war. He’s approaching rock bottom and Cruise conveys Ron’s hurt
in a raw and powerful way that is riveting to watch.

It isn’t until he goes to Mexico
– in a dust-up with a group of veterans in a bordello – that Ron has an
epiphany out in the desert with Charlie (Willem Dafoe), a fellow Vietnam vet.
They get into a heated argument about how many babies they killed over there.
Afterwards, exhausted, Ron says, “Do you remember things that made sense?
Things you could count on before it all got so lost? What am I gonna do, Charlie?”
This conversation, combined with visiting the graveside and confessing to the
parents of the American soldier he accidentally killed (in a painful,
gut-wrenching scene that Cruise gives everything he has), are the pivotal
moments that transform him into being an anti-war activist.

When Ron emerges on the
floor of the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, speaking out
against the war and President Nixon administration, Ron has a cathartic moment,
finally finding a way to channel his anger and frustration. Once removed from
the convention, he’s almost arrested and roughed up, the police giving no
consideration for his physical condition. Undaunted, he uses his military training
to organize the protestors and continue on in a battle of a different kind.

One
month after Ron Kovic gave a speech at the 1976 Democratic Convention, his book
about his experiences before, during and after the Vietnam War was reviewed in The New York Times. It drew the
attention of movie producer Martin Bregman who bought the rights to the book.
He quickly realized that it didn’t have good commercial prospects as the
subjects of Vietnam and life as a paraplegic being its focal points. Kovic then
served as a consultant on a film about the same subject – Hal Ashby’s Coming Home (1978), starring Jon Voight,
who won the Academy Award for his performance. Universal Studios – who were
going to finance Born on the Fourth of
July – pulled their money and support. No other studio was interested and no
one wanted to direct it. All Bregman had was a screenplay written by a young
Oliver Stone, who clearly identified with Kovic’s experiences: “My story and
that of other vets is subsumed in Ron’s. We experience one war over there then
came home and slammed our heads into another war of indifference…and we all
came to feel we had made a terrible mistake.”

Bregman
found German investors willing to put up money for pre-production, hired Dan
Petrie (A Raison in the Sun) to
direct, cast Al Pacino as Kovic, with Orion Pictures distributing the film. A
few weeks before rehearsals were to begin, the foreign financing fell through
and the rights reverted back to Universal. Pacino had second thoughts and left
to make …And Justice For All (1979),
leaving Bregman $1 million in the hole and Stone depressed, his script without
a home. The latter promised Kovic that one day they’d make this film together
and became a filmmaker in his own right.

While
Stone wrote the script for Wall Street
(1987), Tom Pollock, then-president of Universal, took a look at the
filmmaker’s script for Born on the Fourth
of July and realized, “it was one of the great unmade screenplays of the
past 15 years.” He told Stone that the studio would make it for $14 million and
a major movie star as Kovic. After making Platoon,
Stone considered rewriting a script from 1971 based loosely on his own
experiences returning home from Vietnam but put it aside in favor of Kovic’s
story, which he felt had broader appeal.

Stone
and Kovic considered Sean Penn, Charlie Sheen, Nicolas Cage, and ultimately
went with Tom Cruise. Stone met with him and told the actor he needed a movie
star to play Kovic and had a small budget to make it. Cruise, who had wanted to
work with Stone, accepted the challenge. He was drawn to the film as he felt it
was a personal passion project for Stone: “I thought it was almost his life
story, too, his Coming Home.”

The
young actor identified with Kovic’s working class ethic and his drive to become
the best: “I grew up hearing ‘no’s and can’ts’, but I pushed myself forward,
always looking ahead so I wouldn’t get stuck.” Stone was drawn to Cruise’s
all-American boy image: “I thought it was an interesting proposition: What
would happen to Tom Cruise if something goes wrong?” Furthermore, “I sensed
with Tom a crack in his background, some kind of unhappiness, that he had seen
some kind of trouble. And I thought that trouble could be helpful to him in
dealing with the second part of Ron’s life.”

Bregman
felt that Cruise was a safe choice and not strong enough an actor for the tough
material. Initially, Kovic agreed until he met Cruise: “I felt an instant
rapport with him that I never experienced with Pacino.” The two men talked for
hours and Kovic got very emotional. He remembered, “I felt like a burden was
lifted, that I was passing all this on to Tom. I knew he was about to go to
Vietnam, to the dark side, in his own way.” The actor remembers meeting the man
he would play on film and how he “really opened up to me.” Cruise knew this
would be a daunting role and felt ready after making The Color of Money (1986) with Martin Scorsese and Rain Man (1988) with Barry Levinson. “I
made it work one day at a time. If I looked at the mountain, it was just too
high.”

Stone
wasn’t immediately convinced: “Tom was cocky, sure he could handle everything.
But I wasn’t so sure…He was shaky at first, but we shot in continuity as much
as possible to show how, step by step, he began to understand.” To prepare for
the role, Kovic took Cruise to veterans’ hospitals where he spent days talking
and working with paraplegics. He hung out with Kovic in a wheelchair until it
became second nature. Cruise also read many books about the war, including
Kovic’s diary. Stone brought in his trusted military adviser Dale Dye to work
with Cruise and the cast on two separate week-long training missions. Dye
remembered that he “treated him no differently than I treated anybody else…A
big part of it was, of course, helping Tom Cruise get the mentality he needed
for the film.” They had to dig their own foxholes and live in them as well as
learn to handle a variety of weapons. Stone also brought in Abbie Hoffman to
talk to the cast about the peace movement in the 1960s. The legendary activist
even has a cameo in the film.

Principal
photography was a grueling 65-day shoot with 15,000 extras and 160 speaking
roles. Dallas doubled for both Long Island and Mexico. The production shot
10-12 hours a day in 100-degree heat. At one point, Cruise got sinusitis. Several
crew members fainted in the extreme climate. At one point, Stone became quite
sick. Focused on the film, he ignored the symptoms until they got in the way of
his work. He went to a local hospital in Dallas, underwent a panel of tests and
was given medicine. His condition, however, only worsened. The film’s
production coordinator called a local physician who had treated other crew members.
He recognized Stone’s symptoms as an allergic reaction to a particular kind of
pollen common in Dallas at that time of year.

Stone
challenged his crew to duplicate Long Island in Dallas on a small budget.
Several blocks of houses were given new looks and landscaped to recreate
Massapequa, 1957. Principal photography began in October 1988 with the
successful transformation of a southeast section of the city into a Long Island
neighborhood. Born on the Fourth of July
also saw Stone, for the first time, experiment with several different kinds of
film stocks: 16mm, Super 16 and 35mm. He combined footage shot for the film
with grainy, archival footage that was originally shot for network news in ’72
to recreate the veterans demonstrating at the Republican National Convention in
Miami Beach. This certainly wouldn’t be the last time as he continued to do so
with The Doors (1991), JFK (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994), Nixon
(1995), and U Turn (1997).

Filming
went on hiatus for the Christmas holidays, giving Stone an opportunity to edit sections
of the film. He realized that his vision for Born on the Fourth of July had expanded and he would need to shoot
more footage than budgeted. Stone went to Pollock and told him he needed an
additional $3.8 million. The studio executive was hesitant but after the
director showed him some edited sequences, he was given the money and allowed
to go ten minutes over the running time that was in his contract.

Cruise
had a particularly tough time with the scene where a sexually impotent Kovic
pays to be with a Mexican prostitute. Stone remembers the actor’s shyness:

“We
just kept shooting, working up to the place where Tom cries, thinking about
everything he’ll miss – certainly not from the joy of sex. On one take,
something happened inside him. Those tears came from someplace in Tom.”

Cruise
remembered, “I went to Oliver and I said, ‘I’m just not there. It’s just not
working.’ I remember feeling a lot of anxiety actually.” Stone told him to just
do the scene and not think about it. The actor did it and, in the process,
learned to let go. The two men clashed occasionally: “Tom is macho, aggressive,
male and he wants the best. Perfection is his goal and if he doesn’t achieve
it, his frustration is high.” Stone also clashed with the studio, nervous about
the film’s commercial prospects so he and Cruise gave up their salaries for a
percentage of the profits – a gamble that paid off exponentially.

Kovic
was so impressed by Cruise’s performance that on the last day of filming he gave
the actor his Bronze Star that he won in Vietnam. For Stone, he wanted the film
to “show America, and Tom, and through Tom, Ron being put in a wheelchair,
losing their potency. We wanted to show America being forced to redefine its
concept of heroism.”

More
conflicts arose between Stone and the studio during post-production. When it
came to editing the film, Stone felt that the ending needed to be reshot and he
also wanted John Williams to score the film. Cruise and Pollock agreed about
reshooting the ending but the executive did not want to spend the extra money
required to get Williams. In addition, he wanted to move up the release date to
Veterans Day instead of Christmas. This enraged Stone and he went to Mike
Ovitz, then-head of Creative Artists Agency, who wielded great power in
Hollywood, and got him involved. After a meeting with Pollock, Stone agreed to
shoot a new ending and Pollock agreed to both keep the original release date
and pay to have Williams create the score. Stone remembers, “It left a lot of
bad blood. I didn’t continue to work with Universal.”

Born on the Fourth of July received mixed to
positive reviews at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars
and wrote, “It is not a movie about battle or wounds or recovery, but a movie
about an American who changes his mind about the war…This is a film about
ideology, played out in the personal experiences of a young man who paid dearly
for what he learned.” Pauline Kael was much more dismissive: “Born on the Fourth of July is like one
of those commemorative issues of Life
– this one covers 1956 to 1976. Stone plays bumper cars with the camera and
uses cutting to jam you into the action, and you can’t even enjoy his
uncouthness, because it’s put at the service of sanctimony.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote,
“It’s the most ambitious non-documentary film yet made about the entire Vietnam
experience. More effectively than Hal Ashby’s Coming Home and even Michael Cimino’s Deer Hunter, it connects the war of arms abroad with the war of
conscience at home.”

Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman gave
the film a “C+” rating and wrote, “Tom Cruise tries hard, yet he’s fatally
miscast: He simply doesn’t have the emotional range to play a character
wallowing in grubby desperation.” In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, “Born on the Fourth of July is nettlesome work. Stone has gifts as a
filmmaker, but subtlety is not one of them. In essence, he’s a propagandist,
and, as it turns out, the least effective representative for his point of
view.” Finally, Rolling Stone’s Peter
Travers wrote, “Stone has found in Cruise the ideal actor to anchor the movie
with simplicity and strength. Together they do more than show what happened to
Kovic. Their fervent, consistently gripping film shows why it still urgently
matters.”

There are people that are
patriotic and those that are nationalistic fused with fascism, twisted into
something so ugly that it doesn’t resemble what would be called patriotism, to
spawn the bastardization of what passes for democracy today. This film wrestles
with the definition of patriotism. The power of constitutional rights – most
pointedly, the right to assemble and freedom of speech – are both key to our
understanding about what it means to be American. It is not un-American to be
critical of the country when it has become an unjust place, when the landscape
has become an inhospitable place no longer nurturing the ideals upon which it
was founded.

Within the fabric of Born on the Fourth of July lies hope. We
hope that Kovic is not representing the lone man but the everyman. Hopefully,
we will all wake up to what is really happening, pick ourselves up and enact
change. This film is a rallying cry that needs to be sounded again, repeatedly,
unrelenting in its echo.

SOURCES

Chutkow,
Paul. “The Private War of Tom Cruise.” The New York Times. December 17,
1989.

Friday, August 3, 2018

With a Mission: Impossible movie you know exactly what you're going to get: plot twists a-go-go, some baddie hell-bent on world domination (or destruction) and Tom Cruise performing a series of insanely dangerous stunts as his Ethan Hunt character and the IMF team save the world. You would think that being disavowed by their government yet again would get old but we expect it as part of the franchise's tried-and-true formula. Let's face it these movies are cinematic delivery systems for masterfully orchestrated action sequences with Cruise upping the ante with every subsequent installment. The latest – Fallout (2018) is no different. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie returns to orchestrate the mayhem once again and improves on his previous outing, the excellent Rogue Nation (2015).

In the wake of Hunt capturing Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) in the previous movie, his fanatical disciples from the Syndicate have regrouped and renamed themselves The Apostles and are hellbent on obtaining three plutonium cores for their latest client, the mysterious John Lark. Hunt and his team are tasked with finding Lark and intercepting his meeting with the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), an arms dealer who is brokering the deal. Naturally, things don’t go as planned and Hunt is forced to free Lane with the help of untrustworthy CIA operative August Walker (Henry Cavill), charged with babysitting the IMF team, but who clearly has his own agenda. The rest of movie plays out in a series of plot twists and double-crosses as the stakes are increasingly raised.

Freed from the shackles of the dour DC Cinematic Universe movies, Henry Cavill gets to play a hulking brute cum antagonist – “the hammer” to Ethan’s “scalpel” as Angela Bassett’s Director of the CIA puts it so succinctly. The actor is clearly having a blast playing an assassin as evident in a fantastically kinetic fight sequence that takes place in a public bathroom as Walker and Ethan square off against a mysterious terrorist. It is a sober reminder of just how stale the speed-up/slow-down action sequences of the superhero movies Cavill has been involved in have become. Here, McQuarrie allows him to cut loose and play a different role, which he dives into with gusto.

McQuarrie manages to give everyone on the team their moment to shine, putting an emphasis on teamwork – something that was missing from some of the previous installments. In particular, it is great to see Ving Rhames given so much to do where in the past it felt like he was marginalized at times. Simon Pegg even gets in on the action, including a crucial part in the movie’s nerve-shredding three-way finale.

If Paula Patton’s tough IMF agent in Ghost Protocol (2011) marked a significant evolution in how female characters went from damsels in distress to throwing down just as hard as the men, then Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust – introduced in Rogue Nation – was even more advanced. Her character is clearly Ethan’s equal and with her own intriguingly enigmatic agenda. This continues in Fallout as initially we aren’t sure just whose side this MI6 agent is on and then once it becomes clear, her dilemma is just as personal as Ethan’s.

Tom Cruise always comes across as an otherworldly presence in interviews with his forced laugh and vague, stock answers that come from playing the fame game for so long, but in the Mission: Impossible movies, in particular this one, he appears completely comfortable as he’s played Ethan for so long that it has become second nature. This familiarity with the character and his relationships with the IMF team has never felt more natural. As a result, we care about what happens to them, which is crucial to Ethan’s central dilemma in Fallout: saving someone he loves versus saving the world. McQuarrie lets us think that we know more about Ethan’s past by the end of the movie without actually telling us anything that new – instead, shedding light on his inner life, which is summed up best towards the end when a battered Ethan is reunited with his team. The emotions that play over Cruise’s face are surprisingly moving.

With Ghost Protocol, Cruise upped his game on the stunt work with every subsequent installment having us wonder, what crazy stunt is he really going to do next? It is a wonderfully analog element in this digital age chock full of CGI heroics that we pretend happened but know in our hearts were created in a computer somewhere. McQuarrie is his partner in crime, using long takes and full body shots to show Cruise really jumping out of a plane at 25,000 feet and flying down the streets of Paris on a motorcycle at insane speeds only to get knocked off and thrown like a rag doll. How long can he keep this up? Who knows but for now it is a lot of fun to watch.

Is this the best Mission: Impossible movie yet as some claim? I don’t know. I have to see it a few more times and let it sink in before I can rank it up against the rest of the series but it is certainly right up there. McQuarrie has pulled off a deft cinematic trick with Fallout by making a standalone sequel. There is just enough exposition dialogue to clue newbies into who everyone is and their relationship to one another while judiciously sprinkling references to previous movies for fans in the know. He also sets up fascinating possibilities for the next Mission: Impossible movie should he choose to accept it.

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

When I was a child my grandfather and I
bonded over several things: Clint Eastwood films, James Bond and The Rockford Files. Some of my fondest
memories I have of him are watching an episode of the latter whenever I would
stay at my grandparents’ house. My grandfather loved the show. Even though he
never verbalized it to me, I think he admired private investigator James Rockford
(James Garner) as a stand-up kind of guy with the ability to talk his way out
of almost any situation, often with a good sense of humor and played fair even
when those that conspired against him did not. He was an honest man in a profession
not known for it.

The show was created by producer Roy Huggins and writer Stephen J. Cannell, originally conceived of as being about a
private investigator who only took on closed cases. Huggins assigned Cannell to
write the script who then proceeded to tweak the clichés and conventions of the
genre. Garner signed on to the project and NBC agreed to finance the pilot
episode. The show ran the gamut of the crime genre as Rockford investigated
murders, blackmail, missing persons, finding stolen money and so on.

Rockford is an ex-convict (wrongly
convicted) turned private investigator who worked the Los Angeles area in his
gold-colored Pontiac Firebird with his base of operations a mobile home located
on the beach. He doesn’t even have a secretary – just an answering machine
(immortalized in the opening credits) to take his messages. His father, Joe “Rocky”
Rockford (Noah Beery) is a retired trucker who constantly gives his son grief
over his profession. Detective Dennis Becker (Joe Santos) delights in giving
him a hard time but helps out when he really needs it. Santos is an
underappreciated character actor who was the ideal foil for Rockford as the
street-smart cop. He is definitely set in the same mold as the frumpy Andy
Sipowicz that Dennis Franz would later make popular on NYPD Blue.

“The Girl in the Bay City Boy’s Club,” showcases
Rockford’s ability to recognize and deal with potential conflict as he sorts
out someone doing a poor job of tailing him while also stopping at a nearby
Jack in the Box for food. When it turns that the person following him is a
potential client (Blair Brown), he confronts her. This episode features an
early, memorable appearance by Evelyn “Angel” Martin (Stuart Margolin), a
lovable ex-con cum con man that occasionally helps out Rockford when he’s not
hitting him up for cash or getting him in trouble, much to his friend’s chagrin.

Like many shows, some of its most memorable
episodes feature appearances by notable guest stars. Case in point: Isaac Hayes in “The Hammer of C Block.” He plays Gandy Fitch, an ex-convict and Rockford’s
former cellmate. It seems that Fitch served 20 years for killing his wife but
claims that he didn’t do it.
Rockford owes him a favor and Gandy has
come to collect, asking him to find the real killer. Hayes brings a gruff
edginess to the role of a surly ex-con who keeps calling Jim, “Rockfish,” much
to his chagrin. Hayes brings an authentic, tough guy swagger that plays well
off of Garner’s laid-back nature.

Occasionally, Rockford would play hard
to get if he felt a case could be solved by the police unless the money was
right and the potential client made a compelling argument like in “The Real
Easy Red Dog,” when a woman (Stefanie Powers) is convinced that her sister’s
suicide is actually murder. Rockford would rather eat a sandwich he just
prepared and watch a football game but she finally wears him down. The woman
turns out to be a rival private investigator and her job offer is just a smoke
screen. This puts him at odds with Lieutenant Diel (Tom Atkins), a gruff police
officer with a thing for P.I.s, specifically Rockford. The playful banter
between Rockford and his female counterpart is a joy to listen to with Garner
and Powers looking like they’re having fun with it.

Garner brings a considerable amount of
charm and leading man good looks to his role. He has a snarky sense of humor
but knows when to play it serious when the situation warrants it. I like that
Rockford solves cases through good ol’ fashion legwork – searching for clues,
reading and questioning people and using his smarts to solve the case. The show
is set up so that we figure things out along with him. We’re rooting for
Rockford as we like him and that’s down to Garner’s amiable take on the private
investigator. It’s easy to root for him as he’s the perpetual underdog, often
at the mercy of dangerous and powerful crooks that have no qualms about hurting
or punishing him, but he keeps plugging away, using common sense, intuition and
his wits to survive.

The Rockford Files is also
a fascinating snapshot of Los Angeles in the mid 1970s: drive-in diners on the
beach, rotary style phones, big cars and so on. The show certainly wasn’t
groundbreaking, adhering to the tried and true crime/mystery format but doing
so in a very entertaining way with well-written scripts that are well-acted by
the reliable cast. Watching an episode of The
Rockford Files is the equivalent of reading a really good mystery novel,
albeit condensed into one hour. It was a prime time hit with a strong six-year
run, enjoying a cult following in the 1980s thanks to syndication and this led
to a series of made-for-television movies from 1994-1999.

For me, there is something reassuring
and almost comforting about watching The
Rockford Files. It is like revisiting an old friend. There is a lot of
enjoyment in watching Rockford’s noble pursuit of the truth over the course of
a given episode with Garner’s genial take on the private investigator guiding
us through his character’s various misadventures. Sometimes he won, sometime he
didn’t but it was always enjoyable to see what kind of case he was mixed up in.

Thursday, May 31, 2018

It is this intriguing
premise that lies at the heart of influential British television series The Prisoner. Coming off the spy show Danger Man, actor Patrick McGoohan and
writer George Markstein created a decidedly unconventional follow-up (some say
sequel) that turned the espionage genre on its head. It was a show unafraid to
defy expectations right down to the uncompromising final episode that so
infuriated viewers back in the 1960s that McGoohan famously went into hiding.
It’s legacy of messing with viewers’ minds lives on to this day in T.V. with
the likes of The Sopranos, Mr. Robot and the recent revival of Twin Peaks, but no one did it better
than The Prisoner.

The opening credits are a
marvel of efficient visual storytelling by brilliantly establishing the premise
in only a few, dialogue-free minutes. Top-secret government agent Number Six
(McGoohan) resigns rather emphatically from his job. Unbeknownst to him, he’s
followed home and as he packs to leave for somewhere else, smoke is piped into
his place. He loses consciousness and so it begins….

He awakens in a quaint,
remote seaside resort known as “the Village.” One almost might say it is an
idyllic place except that he is forbidden to leave. The denizens act nice
enough – maybe a little too nice – but in a way that feels slightly off. This
is best encapsulated in the often-repeated phrase, “Be seeing you,” that the
villagers say to one another and that quickly goes from provincially charming
to downright creepy.

Each episode sees a
different Village administrator, known only as Number Two, try to find
dissimilar ways to get Number Six to reveal why he resigned while he devises
ways to escape and figure out the identity of the mysterious Number One who
supposedly rules over the Village. His captors don’t want Number Six running
around in the world with the kind of knowledge and secrets that he knows. After
all, information is power and they want to know what he knows. Naturally,
Number Six resists (“My life is my own.”), and it is his resilience the Village
will put to the test repeatedly, and therein lies the main source of conflict.

Patrick McGoohan brings his
trademark intensity and intelligence to the role. In every episode we see
Number Six thinking and scheming of ways to outwit his captors and escape.
While the actor displays a wide range of emotions, he also plays the role
enigmatically, never revealing too much as Number Six resists any kind of
inquiries from the powers that be.

The actor famously turned
down playing James Bond on two different occasions and “The Girl Who Was Death”
sees the show at its most playful as the spy genre and detective shows are
satirized, complete with overly complicated plots and an insane, power-hungry
baddie with the requisite femme fatale. This episode certainly conveys McGoohan’s
feelings about the spy genre and why he had no interest in playing Bond.

Watching several episodes
back-to-back is like a experiencing an acid trip – the more you watch the more
you lose touch with reality as you become deeper immersed in this strange world
as the show goes from a spy fantasy story to a science fiction/horror hybrid
fused with ‘60s era psychedelia and “pop art.” It as if artist Jim Steranko had
decided to take a break from drawing Nick
Fury: Agent of SHIELD and decided to go into art direction for The Prisoner.

The show’s overriding theme
is free will as Number Six resists Number Two’s repeated attempts to get him to
divulge his reason for resigning. The Village is a false utopia. In “Arrival,”
Number Two claims that it has everything one could want. Everything that is,
except for freedom – the commodity that Number Six values most. Number Two
controls every aspect of the Village, including its inhabitants and anyone who
steps out of line is dealt with in ruthless fashion as a big white malleable
sphere known as a Rover emerges with a horrific sound and absorbs said
troublemaker. There are hidden surveillance cameras everywhere, eerily
foreshadowing the way we live today.

The Prisoner
also explores the abuse of power. The government that Number Six used to work
for thinks that they own the secrets in his head and do everything in their
power to extract them. To this end, they have an entire Village under their
control to aid in this endeavor. It is all about control – who has it and how
they exert it. As the show begins, the Village administrators have all the
power, but over time Number Six gradually wrests control and repeatedly resists
their various methods to extract information from him.

“A. B. and C” is an
excellent example of the lengths that Number Two will go to extract information
out of Number Six – dream manipulation – while also serving as a showcase for
the show’s style, employing rear screen projection right out of a Classic
Hollywood movie, and skewed camera angles and quick cuts inspired by Orson
Welles’ adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The
Trial (1962), which only draws attention to the artifice of the dream.

While there is some dispute
over who came up with what, McGoohan is often credited as the driving force
behind The Prisoner, starring in
every episode, and writing and directing several of them. This is a rare actor
as auteur project – an accomplishment that has rarely been equaled on T.V. with
the notable exception of Twin Peaks: The
Return where David Lynch directed and co-wrote every episode and also
appeared in many of them. The Prisoner
was clearly a passion project for McGoohan and it shows in every detail, right
down to the décor of Number Six’s home and the blazers everyone wears, that
this was all thought out beforehand and with great care.

The Prisoner’s
legacy is impressive. It has gone on to inspire comic book writers (Grant Morrison),
musicians (The Beatles), films (The
Matrix), and T.V. shows (Lost).
The less said about the mediocre six-episode miniseries remake on AMC in 2009
the better but hopefully it motivated some to seek out the original, which
continues to provoke and remains even more relevant today than when it first
came out. We are even more prisoners of our own making, trying to control every
aspect of our lives and that of others through technology. McGoohan was warning
us of these dangers way back when but clearly his admonition was not heeded.

"We're so desperately
concerned with saying 'We're free!' And I want to know, how free are we? I
think we're being imprisoned and engulfed by a scientific and materialistic
world. We're at the mercy of gadgetry and gimmicks” – Patrick McGoohan